I Took a Family Friend to the Emergency Room – and he went from unwell to scarcely conscious during the journey.
Our family friend has always been a bigger-than-life character. Clever and unemotional – and never one to refuse to a further glass. During family gatherings, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to involve a member of parliament, or entertaining us with stories of the outrageous philandering of different footballers from Sheffield Wednesday during the last four decades.
Frequently, we would share the holiday morning with him and his family, before going our separate ways. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was scheduled to meet family abroad, he fell down the stairs, holding a drink in one hand, suitcase in the other, and sustained broken ribs. The hospital had patched him up and instructed him to avoid flying. Consequently, he ended up back with us, making the best of it, but looking increasingly peaky.
The Day Progressed
The morning rolled on but the anecdotes weren’t flowing like they normally did. He insisted he was fine but he didn’t look it. He attempted to go upstairs for a nap but was unable to; he tried, carefully, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.
So, before I’d so much as placed a party hat on my head, my mum and I decided to drive him to the emergency room.
We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?
A Deteriorating Condition
When we finally reached the hospital, he’d gone from poorly to hardly aware. Other outpatients helped us guide him to a ward, where the distinctive odor of clinical cuisine and atmosphere permeated the space.
Different though, was the spirit. There were heroic attempts at Christmas spirit in every direction, notwithstanding the fundamental sterile and miserable mood; tinsel hung from drip stands and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.
Upbeat nursing staff, who certainly would have chosen to be at home, were bustling about and using that lovely local expression so peculiar to the area: “duck”.
A Quiet Journey Back
After our time at the hospital concluded, we returned home to lukewarm condiments and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, likely a mystery drama, and engaged in an even sillier game, such as a local version of the board game.
By then it was quite late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember having a sense of anticlimax – was Christmas effectively over for us?
Healing and Reflection
Even though he ultimately healed, he had truly experienced a lung puncture and subsequently contracted DVT. And, while that Christmas isn’t a personal favourite, it has gone down in family lore as “the Christmas I saved a life”.
If that is completely accurate, or a little bit of dramatic licence, is not for me to definitively say, but hearing it told each year has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
